Eating the dead flesh [any setting]

[Mastikator]

There's in fantasy games (and movies, books, etc) undead monsters that feed of the living, vampires drinking blood, zombies eating brains, wights devouring souls/life force.
But is there anything about a creature that feed specifically undead beings (but not living or regular dead)?

[Dhavaer]

There is in one of the later D&D 3.0 Monster Manuals (or maybe the Fiend Folio). I don't remember the exact name, but it was worm-like and had a lot of vowels.

[LibraryOgre]

In Dragonlance SAGA, they pointed the existence of ghouls as starting with someone who ate the flesh of the dead in an extreme circumstance.

[MonochromeTiger]

In Dragonlance SAGA, they pointed the existence of ghouls as starting with someone who ate the flesh of the dead in an extreme circumstance.

as I recall the pathfinder version of ghoul origins has them as undead brought forth from the bodies of cannibals. fairly sure they're prone to a bit of in-classification-cannibalism too. aside from that any number of worms would likely try to make a meal of an undead seeing as they're already partly decayed flesh. for that matter any sufficiently strong carrion eater might be able to overcome its cowardice long enough to try taking a bite out of a curiously mobile corpse-snack.

[Mastikator]

I'm talking more about something that eats the undead because it's undead and can't sustain itself on normally dead bodies. Something that maybe sustains itself on the negative lifeforce that an undead creature has?
Something that would be able to eat a vampire or a zombie, but not a deceased person and not a living person.

[Erasmas]

Sounds to me like you have the opportunity to create a custom monster!
:smallbiggrin:

[RochtheCrusher]

Would be a sensible anti-undead measure for a wizard whose tower was in a necrotic hellhole, or for a necromancer who wanted to keep his creations from escaping to avoid detection.

For those origin stories, though, you'd want a field of spreadable, piranha-quick grubs rather than a single monster which the undead could overwhelm (or which could reveal your activities itself).

[BWR]

zombies eating brains
Ghouls and ghasts eat bodies. Zombies don't eat anything. One of the points D&D got right compared to what George Romero has everyone thinking.


a creature that feed specifically undead beings
I assume you mean "feed ON undead beings". Perhaps some sort of Positive Energy creature?

Talash
This horrific creature stands 20 feet tall with a ropy, vaguely anthropoid appearance. In place of a normal head a short mouthed tube capped with what appears to full, fleshy lips. They have no visible sensory organs and rarely make any apparant goal-oriented moves.
The talash are rare beings, sometimes seen striding around with their quirky, jerky movements. Most creatures instinctively avoid the talash even if the talash does not normally attack them.
When it comes across the presence of undead in the area, the talash starts acting more and more agitated, almost as if it is sniffing theair. When it detects undead it breaks out into a full run and charges towards the nearest undead and tries to consume it. The lips open to reveal an astoundingly wide throat with razor-sharp 'hairs' or horns that line the entirety of the visible throat. The talash can feed off any undead, corporeal or incorporeal, and will tear apart buildings and wade through living creatures as though they aren't there in order to get to their targets.

[Rhynn]

Ghouls and ghasts eat bodies. Zombies don't eat anything. One of the points D&D got right compared to what George Romero has everyone thinking.

To be really picky, the brain-eating wasn't Romero, it was The Return of the Living Dead, which is a horror-comedy B-movie. Flesh-eating, though, sure.

Not that D&D zombies are particularly voodoo. The best 20th-century literary antecedent is probably H. P. Lovecraft's The Re-Animator, although those zombies are intelligent. Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Howard also featured a lot of undead monsters, including basically D&D ghouls (with that whole messy "are they dead or are they not?" deal), and the classic undead skeletons with points of light in their eye sockets.

[Yora]

There's one creature that will eat only humanoid undead. Unfortunately, it can cast animate dead.

It's "rot reaver" from 3rd Ed. MM3

[Killer Angel]

There's in fantasy games (and movies, books, etc) undead monsters that feed of the living, vampires drinking blood, zombies eating brains, wights devouring souls/life force.
But is there anything about a creature that feed specifically undead beings (but not living or regular dead)?

In Blade II, the BEG was this kind of supervampire, that fed to "regular" vampires.
Sorry, but I don't recall if also humans were edible targets.

[Shadowknight12]

In both editions of World of Darkness's Vampire game, high-power vampires lose the ability to feed on animals and humans, and require the blood of other vampires to survive.

There are also feats in D&D (usually Vile) that allows the taker to gain benefits from eating or grafting the flesh of the dead.

Then there's the Susurrus, but I don't think it eats the undead.

[Set]

It depends on your personal theories regarding negative energy.

In some depictions, negative energy is antithetical to life, and, if that were applied consistently, then fungus, carrion flies, etc. would totally avoid undead, being as repulsed by undead flesh as any other living creature. Maggots would squirm away from zombie meat, mosquitos would shy away from vampires, etc. and even bacteria or fungi would fail to take root or thrive in the bodies of undead creatures, which would eventually dry out or slough off or whatever, but wouldn't ever undergo the sorts of decay that normal living tissue undergoes, as no consumer bacteria or insect life or whatever would be able to get in there and break the negative-energy-charged tissues down. However, that's rarely portrayed in the mechanics, and 'life-hating' negative energy, for instance, seems to be able to *create life* (though the contagion spell) while life-creating positive energy, through the remove disease spell, seems to be the go-to solution for killing unwanted organisms. (So the basic rule seems to be 'negative energy hates life, unless it's icky gross life like germs and parasites and bugs and stuff' and 'positive energy creates life, except when it kills bugs dead because shut up I don't have to be consistent.')

In other depictions, and usually in the game mechanics, negative energy is just a different color of positive energy, and, instead of being a hungry devouring void, is able to serve as an infinite free energy source, such as via animate dead (which is vastly more efficient than using positive energy to animate objects, since it lasts forever). Instead of being the opposite of positive energy, it's just 'another frequency,' and, by the sometimes inconsistent logic of the game mechanics, is *more natural* than positive energy, since a creature powered by negative energy is immortal and undecaying and immune to disease, etc. while a creature nurtured by positive energy is undergoing a constant state of assault by the natural world, aging and dying and being required to kill and devour living creatures every single day just to buy another day of life (something many undead, such as mummies and liches and skeletons and zombies and ghosts, have no need to do, as whatever they are, the natural world, through entropy, isn't attempting to destroy them every single second of every single day, unlike living creatures).

Since this latter case seems to be how the mechanics work (whether or not it's 100% backwards to the *Fluff* of undead), it would make sense that, just as there are creatures here on earth that have adapted to feed off of chemicals in the deep sea vents, far from the light of the sun, that creatures in a fantasy world would have adapted to feed off of the energies of magic itself, or the negative energies that empower an undead creature.

Entire classes of disease organisms might have evolved to prefer the taste of undead flesh, and necromancer-friendly communities might find their zombie minions out in the fields dropping to 'corpse rot' as these fantasy organisms spread among their 'workers' and devour their undead flesh, leaving them having to come up with measures to slow or stop the spread of this 'plague.' (A 'plague' that their rivals, who hate their zombie plantations, might deliberately spread.)

For larger creatures, an undead that devours smaller undead to harvest their stored negative energy, and therefore strengthen itself (like a zombie eating barghest), or even 'recycles' that negative energy to create different sorts of undead that serve it (eats up 'free range' zombies and shadows and whatnot and uses the energy to create it's own servant creatures, for instance), could work, thematically. Vampires that feed on other vampires are common enough in vampire lore, and there's some precedent for ghosts becoming more powerful by 'shredding' other lesser ghosts.

A shambling 'corpse colossus' that snatches up normal zombies and incorporates them into it's own massive body could be yet another variation (even if it's not technically 'eating' the other undead, it's still absorbing them and destroying them as individual creatures, adding their mass to it's own).

[Draken]

There is in one of the later D&D 3.0 Monster Manuals (or maybe the Fiend Folio). I don't remember the exact name, but it was worm-like and had a lot of vowels.

That's the Avolakia, intelligent aberrations that feed on undead flesh.

Like the rot reavers mentioned before, Avolakias can raise the undead. Unlike rot reavers, Avolakias are highly intelligent aberrations that work in societies, and like most such aberrations, they are evil, inhuman and power-hungry. Just very minor players compared to other folks whose call to fame is a bit more distressing than killing you and then making your corpse do household chores before eating it. Such as wearing you alive or crushing your will. Could have had more potential than the Grell, I guess. But hey, floating+beak+brain+tentacles-eyes.

[Spore]

Followers of Namira (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Namira) are known to do such disgusting things (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Taste_of_Death) in Tamriel (Elder Scrolls games).

[SiuiS]

as I recall the pathfinder version of ghoul origins has them as undead brought forth from the bodies of cannibals. fairly sure they're prone to a bit of in-classification-cannibalism too. aside from that any number of worms would likely try to make a meal of an undead seeing as they're already partly decayed flesh. for that matter any sufficiently strong carrion eater might be able to overcome its cowardice long enough to try taking a bite out of a curiously mobile corpse-snack.

This holds true in D&D as well.


I'm talking more about something that eats the undead because it's undead and can't sustain itself on normally dead bodies. Something that maybe sustains itself on the negative lifeforce that an undead creature has?
Something that would be able to eat a vampire or a zombie, but not a deceased person and not a living person.

There is a wormlike monster (I think it starts with a V?) that specifically animated zombies because it eats zombies, and has mobile food that is also servile.

[Draken]

This holds true in D&D as well.



There is a wormlike monster (I think it starts with a V?) that specifically animated zombies because it eats zombies, and has mobile food that is also servile.

You are probably referring to the avolakia again.

Another option is the Ulgurtasta. Both it and the avolakia are featured in the Worm-that-Walks scenario in Elder Evils (not sure if they show up in the Age of Worms campaign). Ulgurtastas don't fit very well, however, because they are just undead giant worms that eat people and then animate their skeletons inside their stomachs to vomit later.

I believe that Boneyards qualify for undead-eaters since they absorb any bones they can find and their Utter Subsumption ability has no keywords that would make undead immune to it.

[SiuiS]

You are probably referring to the avolakia again.

Yup! Page didn't fully load, so all I saw was that no one named it explicitly (it seemed) and there weren't more pages so it was unlikely to have slipped my notice.

Except it totally did. Hee.

[Mastikator]

What about feeding off negative energy? Similarly to how wights feed off the life force of living creatures are there any creatures that feed of the anti-life force of undead creatures?
Is there anything that could for example eat a wraith?

[Mewtarthio]

Is there anything that could for example eat a wraith?

A proton pack! :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, Sin-Eaters from nWoD can eat ghosts to recover spent power. They don't need to do so to survive (it has its downsides, too), but they've always got the option.

I also recall that the nWoD Mummy book had a creature that only preyed on the Arisen. They don't really "eat" them per se (since the Arisen are all but impossible to permanently destroy), but they can seriously drain their powers. Certain Arisen can, themselves, eat ghosts, but they gain no sustenance from it; they only do so to punish the spirits or reforge them into terrible servants.

[Tetsubo 57]

To be really picky, the brain-eating wasn't Romero, it was The Return of the Living Dead, which is a horror-comedy B-movie. Flesh-eating, though, sure.

Not that D&D zombies are particularly voodoo. The best 20th-century literary antecedent is probably H. P. Lovecraft's The Re-Animator, although those zombies are intelligent. Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Howard also featured a lot of undead monsters, including basically D&D ghouls (with that whole messy "are they dead or are they not?" deal), and the classic undead skeletons with points of light in their eye sockets.

Romero never even called them zombies. He always referred to them as 'ghouls'. At least in the first three films. I never aw any of his later work. I thought Return of the Living Dead was highly entertaining.

[Tetsubo 57]

In both editions of World of Darkness's Vampire game, high-power vampires lose the ability to feed on animals and humans, and require the blood of other vampires to survive.

There are also feats in D&D (usually Vile) that allows the taker to gain benefits from eating or grafting the flesh of the dead.

Then there's the Susurrus, but I don't think it eats the undead.

I've never understood why grafting on the flesh of the dead is considered Vile. I mean, that is what we do now.

[123456789blaaa]

I've never understood why grafting on the flesh of the dead is considered Vile. I mean, that is what we do now.

I can't remember any feat or whatever like that. Assuming there is something like that, perhaps it's Vile for the same reason Deformity:obese is Vile. For that specific thing, you're doing it as as a form of homage and worship towards horrific and evil beings.

There are plenty of things in DnD that allow you to graft dead flesh onto yourself without being evil however. The Pale Master PRC replaces your arm with a skeletal or stiched one. You can also buy or create grafts made out of undead parts.

[Shadowknight12]

I've never understood why grafting on the flesh of the dead is considered Vile. I mean, that is what we do now.

D&D has a tendency to mindlessly category "icky" things as evil.

For example, despite many nature gods being Neutral, gods associated with vermin, disease, fungi and poison (all of which are part of nature) are typically Evil.

[Mastikator]

D&D has a tendency to mindlessly category "icky" things as evil.

For example, despite many nature gods being Neutral, gods associated with vermin, disease, fungi and poison (all of which are part of nature) are typically Evil.

Not entirely mindless, there are studies that link our perception of morality to perception of disgust, where if people view things they find disgusting (sewage, rotten corpses, etc) it even goes so far as to influence our political views; they will tend to have more conservative views, and people who are more less easily disgusted have less conservative views.
If you create a system where good and evil are real forces then it's not entirely misguided to place parasites, disease, rot and other similarly icky things in the evil category.

[Rhynn]

Romero never even called them zombies. He always referred to them as 'ghouls'. At least in the first three films. I never aw any of his later work. I thought Return of the Living Dead was highly entertaining.

Return is a freaking classic, yeah, and IIRC the first sequel was still entertaining.

[Shadowknight12]

Not entirely mindless, there are studies that link our perception of morality to perception of disgust, where if people view things they find disgusting (sewage, rotten corpses, etc) it even goes so far as to influence our political views; they will tend to have more conservative views, and people who are more less easily disgusted have less conservative views.
If you create a system where good and evil are real forces then it's not entirely misguided to place parasites, disease, rot and other similarly icky things in the evil category.

Very interesting, yet entirely irrational. A system designed logically should attempt to avoid such pitfalls during creation. Such obvious pitfalls, too. I can understand people not realising that poison and disease are natural, but fungi and vermin (along with animals such as snakes, rats, bats and wolves)? That's just completely unacceptable. It defies all logic.

[Rhynn]

It defies all logic.

Funny thing: humans are really bad at logic. On a fundamental level. Our basic perception-interpretation are all about heuristics, which are pretty much the opposite of logic.

If you create a setting based on logic, it's not going to feel very realistic.

[Mastikator]

Very interesting, yet entirely irrational. A system designed logically should attempt to avoid such pitfalls during creation. Such obvious pitfalls, too. I can understand people not realising that poison and disease are natural, but fungi and vermin (along with animals such as snakes, rats, bats and wolves)? That's just completely unacceptable. It defies all logic.
What difference does it make whether it's natural? If evil is a thing, a fact of reality then some things in nature will be evil (and some other good). And there are things in nature that does fall into the "evil" category, for example dolphins that murder seals for no other reason than the sadistic joy of killing.
If you create a system where good and evil are real things outside of human perception and assume that human perception is on some level able to accurately differentiate between good an evil then stuff like disease and parasites are evil in very much the same way that murder and torture are evil. To say that people are right to think torture is evil yet wrong to say disease is evil is entirely arbitrary since all we have to begin with is our preconceived notions.

[Necroticplague]

D&D has a tendency to mindlessly category "icky" things as evil.

For example, despite many nature gods being Neutral, gods associated with vermin, disease, fungi and poison (all of which are part of nature) are typically Evil.


Not entirely mindless, there are studies that link our perception of morality to perception of disgust, where if people view things they find disgusting (sewage, rotten corpses, etc) it even goes so far as to influence our political views; they will tend to have more conservative views, and people who are more less easily disgusted have less conservative views.
If you create a system where good and evil are real forces then it's not entirely misguided to place parasites, disease, rot and other similarly icky things in the evil category.

Alternatively:if you create a system where good and evil are objective forces, then there's no reason they have to match human perceptions of what is and is not disgusting or good or evil, so it doesn't make sense to have them match up like that.

Even more alternatively: In a world with more than one creature intelligent enough to express thoughts on what is good and evil and what is disgusting, is their any particular reason that the forces of Good and Evil should align themselves with the views of what one race finds disgusting (or what they think is good and evil, for that matter)?